As individuals and organizations increase their consumption of digital visual media, the demand for increasingly complex image processing products continues to grow. One field in which image processing has been particularly active is that of image blending. In image blending, two separately rendered digital images are combined into and displayed as single digital image. This functionality may be useful, for example, in a video conferencing application that combines a first video image of participants from a remote site with a second video image of presentation materials to create a single video image depicting the participants at the remote site in the background and the shared presentation materials in the foreground.
When combining a background image with a foreground image to create a blended image, it may be desirable to make certain portions of the foreground image appear relatively more transparent or opaque with respect to other portions of the foreground image. For example, it may be desirable to make the most important features of the foreground image more opaque to convey a clear picture of the foreground, while making less-important areas of the foreground image more transparent to show the background image.
Throughout the drawings, identical reference numbers designate similar, but not necessarily identical, elements.